After a couple of weeks in the first fermenter, the plum wine had reached the point where it needed moving on to the next stage. A few spots of mould were starting to grow on the top, and it was beginning to ferment of its own accord.

Now it needed a hand.

So we’ve syphoned it off into a second fermenter and added both sugar and brewers’ yeast. A lot of sugar, in fact: around 4kg.

Now obviously you can’t just dump that much sugar in and walk away; you have to introduce it in a form similar to the existing mixture. In short, you need to add it as a syrup. Cue boiling water on the stove and stirring in the sugar, slowly, until it’s all dissolved and the liquid is clear. In all it took about half an hour to liquify that much sugar and add it to the plum juice.

You then add the yeast at a ratio of one teaspoon for each gallon of wort (brew), which in our case meant we needed around three teaspoons.

We gave it a good stir, capped it off with a lid and inserted an air lock to release the pressure without letting in any of the outside air.

Now we must wait. We’ve put it in the outhouse where it’s been bubbling away for a few days now, and it shows no signs of quietening down. When it does, though, we’ll be ready for the final stage, and post an update.

Related posts:

1. Making plum wine
2. Bottling the plum wine
3. We’ve opened our first plum wine